For companies that manufacture and service electronic equipment and systems utilizing such equipment, supporting that equipment in the field has become a costly and complex problem.
When a customer's equipment fails, it is mandatory that the manufacturer or supplier of the equipment remedy the failure as quickly as possible. In the case of an electronic system and, in particular, wherein the manufacturer providing the service has only supplied a portion of the overall system, i.e., the video display/controller portion of a communications system which includes a computer provided by a third party manufacturer, additional service problems arise since it is desirable to do the testing on a real-time basis. A further problem may arise in that the customer or service representative may not be certain where the problem is, i.e., in the video display provided by the manufacturer thereof or in the computer itself.
Thus what is desired is a real-time, inexpensive and rapid test procedure for monitoring computer channels to detect and isolate any faults on the channel.